This blog covered the last years of George W. Bush's nightmarish reign as President of the United States, and specifically chronicled his last days in power. Updates will continue until his death.

Monday, October 23, 2006

I NEVER READ BOOKS ABOUT MYSELF, NOT EVEN THE BAD ONES

President Bush read three books about George Washington in the past year, but he didn't even flick through one of the hundreds of books now published about himself?

Bush also now claims that he has never read any book about his presidency, including the three volumes in Bob Woodward's ultra-controversial 'Bush At War' trilogy.

As you will see when you watch this short video of a recent Bush interview, the president isn't very convincing when he tries to deny having read any of the Woodward books. He's even less convincing when he tries to deny haing read any books at all about himself.

Not one.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You said in your press conference last week, you joked about the books being written about your administration. Have you read any of them?

BUSH: No.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why not?

BUSH: You know, I don’t know. I haven’t read the bad ones. I haven’t read the good ones. I guess it makes me — It’s kinda weird to be reading books about yourself when you’re still trying to be the President. I really haven’t.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you explain, though, how Bob Woodward, who has written three books –

BUSH: I didn’t read the book.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I know. But he’s written three books about your presidency –

BUSH: I didn’t read any of them.

STEPHANOPOULOS: None of them?

BUSH: George, I have not read one book about me. I read a lot of books this year. But not one about myself. You know, I just — I feel uncomfortable reading about myself. It’s — it’s hard for you to relate, I think. But my — I’m still in the midst of my presidency. And people are writing books about my presidency. It is so myopic in many ways. The true history of my presidency won’t be reflected until way after I’m gone.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You don’t think there’s anything you could learn from these books in real-time?

BUSH: No.

It is quite remarkable, and extremely revealing, that Bush does not think there is anything that can be learned, or any value-rich insight gained, from even glancing over Bob Woodward's trilogy of the Bush presidency and Bush's 'War On Iraq'.

The three Woodward books have featured a checklist of key White House and Pentagon officials and former defense secretaries, vice-presidents, international leaders, even Bush's own key staff, all speaking openly and honestly about the mistakes they have witnessed and the things that can, or could have, been done to limit the hurricanes of violence that sweep through cities across Iraq.

Bush may claim to have never read the books, but he would have been briefed on the meat of them, so he knows exactly what the journalists know about the same subject. The White House actively promoted the first two Woodward books, openly, only clamping up when it came to the current volume. 'State Of Denial' does indeed show Bush charging through Iraq War policy, shouting 'Stay The Course' while dissent and despair consumes those around him.

This is the White House in meltodwn mode, crumbling under the weight of the war, the dead, the revolt of the generals in April this year and the appalling public spectacle of the failure of the democratically elected Iraqi government to slow, let alone stop, the daily carnage.

And Bush isn't interested enough to want to find out for himself what everyone has been too afraid to tell him? The incuriosity alone is worthy of condemnation.

The rest of Bush's presidency is going to be something of a horror show. They told him to shout "Stay The Course" and he did it, tirelessly, but now Bush has abandoned his war mantra for something fresh and more flexible.

The 'Stay The Course' policy is dead. Bush even tried to deny he had ever been 'Stay The Course' to howls of laughter from anyone with a memory.

Everything (except Bush's refusal to accept reality as it is) is about to change for the White House, and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon.

Bush will soon find himself being told that the United States has been unnoffically negotiating, for months, with Sunni insurgents. Or the 'Sunni Resistance', which will become their common media name soon enough.

Anyone fighting the US occupation of Iraq was, once, simply a terrorist. Now the forces opposed to America have been divied up, categorised, brand-named. You've got the Sunni insurgents, the terrorists, the Ba-athists, the Saddam holdouts, the foreign fighters, plus additional new names being added by White House and Pentagon officials every week.

President Bush will actually have to front television cameras and acknowledge that while the Sunni "resistance" has been killing Americans, they are not trying to ferment civil war, and that they may be negotiated with to end some of the violence.

Then again, when Bush can turn around claim (with a smirk) "We've never been 'Stay The Course'," he could probably get away with denying comprehensively that the US is negotiating with terrorists.

President Bush is also likely to find himself without Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the new year. Rumsfeld will wait until after the November mid-term US elections are over with before he announces his departure. He will not be quitting of course, and will not be forced out. He will instead choose to leave to become an humanitarian, or something.

The Democrats are poised to seize control of most of the power in Washington in just a few weeks, and President Bush is now likely to spend the next two a bit years of his presidency backing down from many of his most powerful stands, and statements.

While Bush has been busy with Iraq, China and Russia have been busy cutting deals and firming up alliances all over the world, including the Middle East.

Russia will not allow either the US or Israel to attack Iran, and now demands the US choose diplomacy instead of aggression, every time Bush says "We will not tolerate an Iran with nuclear weapons".

China, meanwhile, is saying virtually the same as Russia, but about North Korea. China will not tolerate an attack or invasion of North Korea by the United States.

Four and a half years after President Bush declared North Korea, Iran and Iraq to be "an Axis of Evil", North Korea now has some nuclear weapons, Iran will get them if Russia thinks they should, and Iraq is about to be ceded to Iran's Shiites. Rumsfeld's recent mumblings about Iraq having to take control of their own security all but sealed the handover deal.

If he had read even one or two of the books written about his presidency in the past two years, of course, Bush would already know all these things.

"The true history of my presidency won't be reflected until way after I'm gone."

What a bizarre thing to say, to even think. What is the "true history" of the Bush presidency that won't be revealed until "way after I'm gone."?

So are we not seeing the "true history" of the Bush presidency unfolding every day? Doesn't he help write that history with every choice he makes between dawn and dusk?

Perhaps he's talking about his presidency of lies, deceptions, smirking denials and the shredding of his own country's constitution. Could that be the "true presidency" he's talking about?

If Bush had bothered to read one or two of the bestselling books about himself, Bush would already know that the "true presidency" has been exposed.

IN BUSH ALTERNATIVE REALITY, HE NEVER SAID HE WAS "STAY THE COURSE" IN IRAQ

Does President Bush even know what the internet is?

D0es he understand what search engines like Google and Lexis Nexus can actually do, in seconds?

Does he not comprehend that when he tries to deny he ever said something, the truth can be discovered and published on the internet before he even finishes his speech?

President Bush has given a series of drab, talking points infested interviews since the fifth anniversary of September 11.

Through virtually all of them, Bush managed to concede that very little was going wrong in Iraq. He refused to accept that his 'stay the course' solution to Iraq's problems was simply not working, and everyone but him and Prime Minister Blair knew that, had already accepted that as a basic fact.

But not President Bush.

Bush managed to sit through interview after interview and blindly deny reality. He failed to even acknowledgement the stream of credible, respected advice and commentary coming from within the senior ranks of his own military, along with former officials of his own administration, all sounding urgent warnings on the disaster that is Iraq today.

In the end, Bush had no choice but to admit they were wrong about Iraq. It had been an admission delayed for months. Obviously he could not deny it any longer.

"Well, hey, listen, we’ve never been “stay the course.”

It is perhaps a sign of the state of utter desperation now gripping the White House and just how quickly the pressure from around the world has manifested, that President Bush seemed medicated in his interview yesterday with ABC News.

Maybe he demanded medication if he was being told to go on television and deny one of the key matras of his Iraq War policy, one that has been all but essential to the chaos and piles of corpses in Iraq.

This incomprehensible denial follows the leaking of a plan to find a midway point between "stay the course and cut and run" by James Baker III, now working to help George sort out Iraq after Bush's own father lost his patience and sent in a number of his own key advisors, and trusted friends, to snap the president into line.

But the 'Stay The Course' line has also been used by two White house press spokesmen, by the Secretary of State, the Defence Secretary, the Vice President and a vast sprawl of right-wing, conservative talk back radio, newspaper columnists, headline writers and TV news producers.

'Stay The Course' was not only the Bush message, it was the Bush media message and and an endlessly recyclable headline. Too much going wrong in Iraq for your conservative publication's editorial policy to ignore? Simple, 'Bush Says 'Stay The Course".'

Bush's option to go for utter denial either proves the president will flat-out lie when backed into a corner, or he really has suffered serious brain damage from his days of alcohol and cocaine abuse.

How could he have forgotten such a powerful set of words that he himself had said and sometimes shouted literally dozens of times in the past three years, in speeches, in interviews, on his weekly radio address and on television.

Here's a few examples :

December 15, 2003 : "We will stay the course until the job is done...We're just going to stay the course."

April 13, 2004 : "...my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course."

Saturday, October 21, 2006

BUSH CLAIMS IRAQIS SLAUGHTERING EACH OTHER TO AFFECT OUTCOME OF US CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS ??!!

President Bush is not an idiot, despite the ongoing avalanche of evidence to the contrary.

We're as guilty as many others of taking the piss of Bush, who has one of the hardest jobs in the worled, but we don't believe for a minute that there is not a seriously calculating, sharp and decisive mind floating in the vast cavern inside Bush's skull.

Sometimes he says what he means to say the wrong way, sometimes he says what doesn't mean to say out loud, and sometimes, like today, he says something that is so absurd and so completely arrogant and deluded, you have to wonder if advisors like Karl Rove feed him lines like this to see if he will actually say them out loud, and perhaps to test the gullibility of the Americans who listen to him :

"There’s certainly a stepped-up level of violence (in Iraq), and we’re heading into an election.”

“They believe that if they can create enough chaos, the American people will grow sick and tired of the Iraqi effort and will cause (the) government to withdraw.”

You see, the Iraqis are not slaughtering each other by the hundreds in one of the most brutal civil wars seen in the Middle East in decades. Hell, no. They're going at each other with car bombs and electric drills and acid and machetes and axes and nooses simply to try and mess up the Republicans' plans to continue controlling the US Congress through the rest of Bush's term as president.

The war inside Iraq, amongst the Sunnis and Shiites, is not being fought so as to embarrass President Bush or to ensure the Democrats pick up 25 or so new seats in the US House Of Representatives.

What sort of dementoid would ever consider that Iraqis today could give a damn what happens back in the United States.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

MASSIVE REPUBLICAN DEFEAT IN CONGRESS LOOMS

BUSH CLAIMS "WE WILL WIN", HAS NO BACK-UP PLAN IF THEY DON'T

MORE AMERICANS BELIEVING IN "REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY" DIRTY TRICKS

Less than three weeks remain before Americans go to the polls to vote in the mid-term elections, to determine whether it will be the Republicans or the Democrats who control Congress for the remaining two years of the Bush presidency.

Republican senators across the United States are extremely nervous, and anger is growing at Bush Co for their outright refusal to acknowledge that not only might they lose a number of key Republican seats, but absolute control of the Congress as well.

Both President Bush and his key advisor, and "brain", Karl Rove, have been strutting in recent days, claiming "We Will Win" and "We Will Control Congress". Yes, fine, say Republican, but what happens if we lose? "We Won't," Bush and Rove continue, "We Will Win."

And so it goes on and on.

Although Republican senator Mark Foley has rattled his party with a 'sex scandal' involving teenage pages on Capitol Hill, it is Americans' growing frustration and disbelief over Bush Co's handling of the 'War On Iraq' that is set to seem the Republicans punished in the upcoming vote.

Almost three-quarters of all Americans simply do not believe the president when he says that "We Will Win" in Iraq, and less than 70% now back America's involvement in the conflict.

Republican senators fighting to hold onto their seats are pulling away from Bush, and doing everything they can to avoid talking about the 'War On Iraq'.

But it's not working. The pre-vote polling billboards a massive win for the Democrats. So how can Bush and Rove remain so confident? That's one of the biggest mysteries of all, in Washington, and across the US political media and blogosphere.

Everyone is waiting to find out what the last minute "Surprise!" will be that will turn Americans back to supporting Bush Co and the Republicans. It's long been termed the 'October Surprise' as something major seems to often happen in the last weeks of American presidential and mid-term elections.

Although there is a stunning cynicism amongst many Americans about a terrorist attack just before the elections, the most likely event to grab headlines and potentially boost the Republicans' chances will be the announcement that Saddam Hussein has been found guilty of genocide in Iraq and will be executed. This news is expected only two or three days before the November 7 elections.

But will that be enough of an 'October Surprise'?

Hardly, it seems. Americans are finding out already that Saddam will be declared guilty just before they go to the polls, and many Americans, showing more of that incredible cynicism, now think the Saddam trial verdict has been co-ordinated with the US mid-term elections to make Bush look better.

"This election has become a referendum on Bush and a referendum on his principal policy, which in the minds of voters is Iraq," said pollster Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center.

"It is clear the public is angry with President Bush and therefore with Republicans for a war that has his name on it," he said.

Iraq has been a critical theme on the campaign trail all year, with Republicans frequently on the defensive over Democratic calls for a change of course and charges the Republicans are rubber-stamps for Bush's decisions.

Republican supporters of Bush's argument that Iraq is a central front in the broader war against terrorism now find themselves part of a national minority, according to recent polls.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 57 percent of registered voters did not believe America's safety from terrorism depended on success in Iraq -- a direct refutation of Bush's argument for staying the course.

The percentage of voters who thought the Iraq war could actually hurt U.S. efforts against terrorism jumped to 46 percent from 32 percent in one month, while 61 percent said Iraq was in the midst of a civil war, the same survey found.

Most of those polls also found the war was the top issue driving voters in the November 7 elections, when Democrats must pick up 15 seats in the House of Representatives and six seats in the Senate to win control of Congress.

Bush renewed his message of economic improvement and his charges Democrats are weak on terrorism during a midweek news conference, but it was soon drowned out by the drumbeat of news on the Foley scandal, Iraq and a North Korea nuclear test.

"I've never seen anything like it," independent pollster Dick Bennett of American Research Group said of the combination of anger and uncertainty among the public. The topic of Iraq dominates focus groups he conducts with voters, he said.

"What people want is some hope for the future. Who will make this better? They aren't hearing much of that," he said. "Aside from gasoline prices, nothing is getting better for Republicans."

Remarkably, even the sudden fall in gas prices is seen by millions of Americans as being another "Republican conspiracy" to con them into a positive vote.

....a recent Gallup/USA Today poll found that 42 percent of people actually believe the Bush administration has “deliberately manipulated” the price of gas to effect the election.

"You don't think gas prices matter? Just ask Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter & Ronald Reagan,” say University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. “They'll all tell you that their victories or defeats depended in part on the cost of gas at the pump."

In fact, there is an uncanny connection between President Bush’s popularity and the price at the pump. As gas prices rise, the president’s approval rating tends to sink.

"You see what appears to be an almost perfect correlation that the president's approval is really driven by gas prices,” says Andy LaPerriere, an analyst with ISI Group.

In speeches, statements and news conferences this year, the president has repeatedly declared a range of problems "unacceptable," including rising health costs, immigrants who live outside the law, Noth Korea's claimed nuclear test, genocide in Sudan and Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Bush's decision to lay down blunt new markers about the things he deems intolerable comes at an odd time, a phase of his presidency in which all manner of circumstances are not bending to his will: national security setbacks in North Korea and Iraq, a Congress that has shrugged its shoulders at his top domestic initiatives, a favorability rating mired below 40 percent.

But a survey of transcripts from Bush's public remarks over the past seven years shows the president's worsening political predicament has actually stoked, rather than diminished, his desire to proclaim what he cannot abide. Some presidential scholars and psychologists describe the trend as a signpost of Bush's rising frustration with his declining influence.

In the first nine months of this year, Bush declared more than twice as many events or outcomes "unacceptable" or "not acceptable" as he did in all of 2005, and nearly four times as many as he did in 2004. He is, in fact, at a presidential career high in denouncing events he considers intolerable. They number 37 so far this year, as opposed to five in 2003, 18 in 2002 and 14 in 2001.

Through a spokesman and then in a televised statement, he declared North Korea's claimed nuclear test "unacceptable" before and after it occurred Oct. 9. But he could also be heard on Jan. 9 lecturing students at an elementary school in Glen Burnie, Md., that their recent scores on math and reading proficiency tests were "unacceptable."

Having a president call something "unacceptable" is not the same as having him order U.S. troops into action. But foreign policy experts say the word is one of the strongest any leader can deploy, since it both broadcasts a national position and conveys an implicit threat to take action if his warnings are disregarded.

Bush's use of the term "reflects in some ways his frustration with a world that doesn't seem as amenable to his policies as he would like them to be," said Stanley A. Renshon, a political scientist at the City University of New York. Bush "has strong views; he believes in doing what is right. All of those things give an emotional force to his response" to events he often sees and describes without nuance.

Renshon, who wrote a mostly-favorable book in 2004 about Bush's psychology, said the president's declarations are in keeping with his apparent self-image as a Jeremiah, "railing against the tides" and saying what "people ought to be doing something about."

As such, charting the ebbs and flows of Bush's proclamations of "unacceptability" provides clues to trends in presidential irritations. It also demonstrates that Bush's most intense grievances -- like his attention -- have moved offshore, as evidenced this year by his eight declarations about "unacceptable" events in Iraq, and his 11 declarations about unacceptable behavior by Iran.

*******************

Asked at a news conference on Wednesday whether Washington risks looking feckless in making such categorical statements without taking decisive action, Bush said: "It's very important for the American people and North Korea to understand that that statement still stands. . . . I know this sounds [like] just saying it over and over again, but it's -- rhetoric and actions are all aimed at convincing others" to join Washington's effort to impede that country's weapons ambitions.

******************

Bush's proclamations are not the only rhetorical evidence of his mounting frustrations. One of his favorite verbal tics has long been to instruct audiences bluntly to "listen" to what he is about to say, as in "Listen, America is respected" (Aug. 30) or "Listen, this economy is good" (May 24). This year, he made that request more often than he did in a comparable portion of 2005, a sign that he hasn't given up hope it might work.

Former President Bush has repeated in virtually everything he has conducted since 2001 that he does not give his son, the current president of the United States, any advice on politics or world affairs.

The elder Bush made it sound like his son hadn't asked for advice, which may be true, but those statesmen of the former Bush regime are reportedly furious at what the current president has done to world harmony, the image of the United States abroad, and the reluctance of his neocon council of advisors to listen to the wise words of the old guard.

With the 'War On Iraq' rapidly becoming one of the most disastrous misadventures in generations, elder statesmen such as James Baker III and Henry Kissinger are now not only being listened to in the White House, they are helping to shape current and future international policy, particularly how the US will fight the 'War On Iraq' through 2007.

The former president Bush recently said of his son, "I am very proud of our president. I support him in every single way with every fiber in my body."

That's not a ringing endorsement from the former president. That's practically a cry for help.

....one of the worst-kept secrets in Bush World is the dismay, in some cases disdain, harbored by many senior aides of the former president toward the administration of his son - 41 and 43, as many call them, political shorthand that refers to their numerical places in American presidential history.

...as the war in Iraq has worsened and public support for the current administration has tanked, loyalists of the elder Bush have found it impossible to suppress their disillusionment - particularly their belief that many of 43's policies are a stick in the eye of his father.

"Forty-three has now repudiated everything 41 stands for, and still he won't say a word," a key member of the elder Bush alumni said. "Personally, I think he's dying inside."

The ultimate sticking point for the old guard is Iraq. They cite the appointment of 41's close friend and former secretary of state, James Baker, to chart a new Iraq policy as belated vindication.

The 41s remain incensed, however, that Brent Scowcroft, 41's national security adviser and once a top outside adviser to this administration, has been demonized since he wrote a 2002 article opposing an Iraq invasion.

"What Brent said is now the accepted wisdom," a senior 41 hand said, "and everyone believes 41 agrees with him, though he'll never say it."

While the 41s do most of the finger-pointing, aides to the current president reject the criticism as nitpicking from out-of-touch malcontents.

They also bash the 41s for going public, charging much of the damaging material in Bob Woodward's new book, "State of Denial," was provided by 41 partisans.

Another top former 41 loyalist confided that several ex-colleagues remarked on a perceived "stature gap" between father and son,,,

The 41s concede their broadsides are awkward for their ex-boss, but say they're motivated by a desire to protect his legacy.

In fact, the 41s suggest a singular irony: The unpopularity of the son's administration may be rehabilitating the father's.

An official from the Argentine Federal Planning Ministry issued a memo, where "he spoke of the purchase by Bush of a 98,842 acre farm in northern Paraguay, beween Brazil and Bolivia".

The massive purchase of land was described as being "surprising...a bad signal for the governments of the region."

The article goes on to say the official "considered this Bush step counterproductive for the regional power expressed by Presidents Nestor Kirchner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro."

The George W. Bush family buys 100,000 acres in Paraguay and there are fears this "could cause a hypothetical conflict of all the armies in the region...."

So was Jenna Bush there to check out the land purchase? Or to seal the deal for her dad?

Weird, if true.

And I always thought that when the Red Cross goes after Bush Co. for war crimes relating to the unprovoked, unofficially declared 'War On Iraq' that he and his vice-president and defence secretary would flee to Tasmania.

Perhaps plans have changed and now Paraguay is the place to hide out. Lots of jungle down there.

There's not a lot of current news about the Bush family and Paraguay. But The Bush Dynasty and South America share a strange and controversial history.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

STUNNING : 83% OF AMERICANS DON'T TRUST BUSH TO TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT THE 'WAR ON IRAQ'

LESS THAN HALF BELIEVE HE CAN DELIVER ON NATIONAL SECURITY

Just how bad can poll numbers get for a world leader?

In the case of President Bush, appallingly bad. Stunningly awful.

Two-thirds of Americans no longer believe he is doing a good job, only 3% of Americans think the 'War On Iraq' is going well, and more than half believe he's not doing a good enough job on keeping Americans safe from terrorism.

And probably the most disturbing number of all?

57% believe Bush had foreknowledge about the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.

The poll...found that the war in Iraq continues to take a toll on President Bush....the White House is having difficulty retaining its edge in handling terrorism.

The number of Americans who approve of Mr. Bush’s handling of....terrorism dropped to 46 percent from 54 percent over the past two weeks, suggesting that the president had failed to gain any political lift from an orchestrated set of ceremonies marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The public’s view of Iraq is as dark as it has been since the war began in 2003: two-thirds said the war was going somewhat or very badly, while only 3 percent said it was going very well. Two-thirds said they disapprove of how Mr. Bush is handling Iraq.

Mr. Bush’s job approval has slipped to 34 percent, one of the lowest levels of his presidency...

...83 percent of respondents thought that Mr. Bush was either hiding something or mostly lying when he discussed how the war in Iraq was going.

Fifty-seven percent of respondents said Mr. Bush was personally aware of pre-9/11 intelligence reports that warned of possible domestic terrorist attacks using airplanes. When the same question was asked in May 2002, 41 percent said they believed Mr. Bush was aware.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

W'S FURY AS WASHINGTON 'SEX SCANDAL' CONSUMES THE VITALITY OF HIS PRESIDENCY

President George W. Bush is getting desperate, as he hits the campaign trail, not for himself, but for his party. The Republicans are sinking fast under a staggering rise in the number of US soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq and the all-consuming 'Foleygate' scandal, which seems poised to explode and drag down some of the most powerful senators in the United States.

Actually, Bush's campaigning jaunt, where the rhetoric is reaching absurd levels of hysteria and fear-mongering (even for him) is essential to keep the president's last two years in office from becoming an endless head-butting competition with a revived and powerful Democrat-dominated house.

Bush still has plenty he wants to achieve before he exits the White House in January, 2009, and he also faces the possibility of being impeached for any number of offences the Democrats are slinging at him. Worse yet, without the full power of the Republican house behind him, virtually backing his every move, Bush will find himself having to resort to more and more of the dictatorial powers he has already assigned himself.

In this way, his grip on power may be covered, but only to a point. If Bush spent most of 2007 and 2008 using his signing statements and veto power to over-ride the demands of a Democrat-dominated house, even the Murdoch media would start tagging him as dictator-in-chief.

If the Republicans lose control in early November, then the last days of President George W. Bush are going to be very, very grim indeed. Not only for the president, and the Republicans, but for all of the United States.

...the political winds have turned bleaker for Republicans - and President Bush's private mood has blackened accordingly.

Just two weeks ago, as gasoline prices plummeted and his tough-talking terror counterattack began moving poll numbers his way, Bush turned bullish on the November elections.

Now, however, friends, aides and close political allies tell the Daily News Bush is furious with his own side for helping create a political downdraft that has blunted his momentum and endangered GOP prospects for keeping control of Congress next month.

Some of his anger is directed at former aides who helped Watergate journalist Bob Woodward paint a lurid portrait of a dysfunctional, chaotic administration in his new book, "State of Denial."

In the obsessively private Bush clan, talking out of school is the ultimate act of disloyalty, and Bush feels betrayed from within.

"He's ticked off big-time," said a well-informed source, "even if what they said was the truth."

"There's steam coming out of his ears over the Foley thing," someone who talks to the President regularly said. "The base is starting to get turned off again."

For all the misery, Bush remains defiantly resolute. He will campaign relentlessly in the next month and has told friends he's determined to prove his Democratic and media enemies wrong on Election Day.

"He's remarkably optimistic," a Bush insider said. "Like Ronald Reagan, he has a gift for looking beyond the morass in front of him and sticking to his goals, even if it's not popular.

This cover story in Time Magazine is one of the best summaries of how the 'Foleygate' scandal threatens to tear down the Republican Revolution that began in the early 1990s.

President Bush still refuses to acknowledge what the rest of the world already knows, along with a growing majority of Americans : The 'democracy experiment' in the Middle East has failed, the 'War On Iraq' is a disaster, and the 'War On Afghanistan' is rapidly going the same way as Iraq.

So it's time for Bush to change the tune he's been singing for near on five years.

It's not all about bringing democracy into the Middle East and Afghanistan anymore, now it's about dividing the "moderates" from the "extremists", though the definition of "extremist" is as vague as the 'Global War On Terror' definition of "terrorism". Even as we move into the sixth year of the GWoT, there is still not an international consensus on what determines an action to be an "act of terrorism".

The new song Bush is singing is all about "idealogies" of hatred, and extremism, and how they must be "defeated". But leaders across the Middle East are growing impatient with Bush Co. They know one of the greatest motivators, and recruiting agents, for "extremist idealologies" is the bloodbath that is the 'War On Iraq' and the never-ending humiliation of the Palestinian people by Israel.

Terrorism barely gets a mention anymore in Bush speeches, which also means, then, that the 'T' word is rarely uttered by coalition leaders like British prime minister Tony Blair and Australian prime minister John Howard.

For Bush Co now, it's all about the "extremists". It's the new new Bush Doctrine.

Belatedly, the debate in (the Bush) administration appears to have been won by those who recognize that equating successful counter-terrorism with implanting democracy is naive (witness the exploitation of democracy by Hamas, Hezbollah, and militant Shi'ites in Iraq), and also embarrassing to intransigently undemocratic governments (like Pakistan) that the United States is courting, not only for help in combating terrorism but also for reasons of arms control, access to energy, military bases, and hospitality to US investments (including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan, and of course China).

...the renewed recognition of Afghanistan as the flashpoint in the effort to eradicate Al Qaeda and a realistic backing away from hubristic neoconservative illusions about democratic peace growing out of the barrel of a gun...should be welcomed, despite their obvious purpose of shifting the political spotlight away from the administration's gross ineptitude in Iraq.

The new Bush doctrine of supporting "moderate" regimes and movements against the extremists sounds like a realistic accommodation to the reality that not all those upon whom the United States depends for its security and well-being can pass a litmus test for democracy and human rights.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

WHITE HOUSE IN CRISIS AS THE LIES OF THE IRAQ WAR HIT HARD AND FAST

President George Bush was braced for one of the toughest fights of his political life yesterday as a fierce row broke out over whether he has been misleading the American public over the worsening violence in Iraq. The crisis also rippled across the Atlantic with claims that the administration hid crucial Iraq intelligence from its British allies.

There has been no shortage of revelations in the past three years about the stream of lies and deceptions concerning Saddam Hussein's supposed WMDs. We know for a fact now that the WMD threat promoted by President Bush, Australian Prime Minister Howard and British Prime Minister Tony Blair was a conspiracy-fat, fantasy plot that shotgunned the majority of Americans and most US senators into supporting the 'War On Iraq'. Even those opposed to the war learned to live with those WMD threat falsifications.

But it is the mystifying lies Bush has told about the reality of the war itself that are now set to plunge the rest of his presidency, and the control of the United States, into total chaos.

Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defence Secretary Rumsfeld lied to Americans get the war they wanted, but there seems to be no excuse at all for why they continued to mythologise the truth about the facts on the ground, particularly when hundreds of veterans were posting on their experiences to MySpace blogs and mil-blogs, and there were, literally, thousands of websites shredding the deceptions that Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney were creating as fast as they could utter the words.

Why cover up the truth about the 'War On Iraq' once it had begun? The enemies knew the facts about the attacks they were launching on coalition troops, after all, they were responsible.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld continued to spin-spin-spin the facts solely for the domestic market. It was a PR campaign to ensure the Republicans held onto the White House through the 2004 elections, obviously enough, but they continue to deny the truth that seemingly everyone who is interested already knows is bullshit.

The Iraqi insurgency, and the resistance, are stronger than they've ever been, attacks against coalition forces continue to hit new, incredible peaks (an attack every 15 minutes on average) and 2007 is set to be even worse than 2006, or 2005, or 2004.

The people who will be most affected most by the new relevations of how Bush Co lied and covered-up the truth about the 'War On Iraq' will be all the parents and partners of American soldiers who were told by Bush, "We Are Winning The War" when he clearly knew they were not.

They trusted him, yet again, and he betrayed them. As he has betrayed so many of his supporters and so many of his own staff and senators.

Beyond Watergate? It's beyond belief. Even the most vitriolic Bush-haters on the internet seem mortified that the truth Bush has long known was even worse than they themselves imagined, or fact-projected in their online posts and rantings.

Few of the thousands of websites devoted to criticising and keeping a close watch on Bush Co and the most controversial presidency in American history are taking any pleasure in the knowledge that they have been right all along to question the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld myths about the realities on the ground in Iraq. The shock seeping through Bush critics and Bush supporters is palpable and intense.

But there may be far worse to come. If President Bush was willing to flat-out lie straight to the faces of all Americans about the war in which more than 2700 Americans have died, and more than 20,000 have been seriously wounded, then what else has he lied about?

Monday, October 02, 2006

PRESIDENT BUSH'S SISTER SPILLS A FEW BEANS ON THE BUSH FAMILY

DENIES THEY ARE A "DYNASTY"

She is Dorothy (Doro) Bush Koch, daughter of former president GHW Bush and Barbra Bush, sister of current president GW Bush and Florida governor Jeb Bush. She has become the Bush Family's official historian and she's written a book about the family and it's history called 'My Father, MyPresident'.

It's been described as "a remakarably thorough biography".

So what does she reveal that isn't already known?

Some interesting things.

She calls her brother George, "Mr President" at all times, as does their father.

Doro and George had a sister, Robin, who died of leukemia at three years of age.

The former president Bush "hardly ever misses a slight against (his son)", she says. He told Doro, "It burns the hell out of me," when George W. is criticised.

She claims any advice her father gives to his son is "personal, not politics".

It was George W. who paired former president Bill Clinton with his father to raise money for the 2004 Tsunami Appeals.

Doro claims that George W.' believes his wild drinking days during the 1970s and 1980s "turned my mother's hair white." She says her brother was never a full blown drunk, but made the decision to stop drinking, regardless. It was wife Laura Bush who got him off the booze.

Good Christ Almighty....Doro claims that her father believes Jeb Bush would also make a great president, something George W. himself has said, repeatedly.

MORE INTERESTED IN FART JOKES AND HAVING A LAUGH THAN LEARNING ABOUT ANd ACCEPTING THE TRUTH ON THE WAR HE LAUNCHED AND THE LIVES IT HAS TAKEN

Bob Woodward's 'State Of Denial' is proving to be the biggest headache President Bush has faced in months. Mostly because so much of it is true and impossible to deny. But the White House is trying, but so far it's not working.

Woodward's fat ream of revelations has only confirmed what so many people already believed, or suspected : Bush was lying about the realities of the 'War On Iraq' to get himself elected again in 2004, and then kept lying because it was easier than telling the truth, and facing the consequences.

'State Of Denial' is a devastating portrait of Bush as a war-time leader, lost and unable to regain control of the war or his administration. One of the most disturbing visions of the Bush White House is just how much influence the stunningly incompetent Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held, and aggressively exerted, as he ignored all advice to fight the war his way. Bush appears to have merely gone along with whatever Rumsfeld wanted, even after his cofidant, Condi Rice, stopped talking to to Rumsfeld.

In Bob Woodward’s highly anticipated new book, “State of Denial,” President Bush emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader, presiding over a grossly dysfunctional war cabinet and given to an almost religious certainty that makes him disinclined to rethink or re-evaluate decisions he has made about the war.

It’s a portrait that stands in stark contrast to the laudatory one Mr. Woodward drew in “Bush at War,” his 2002 book, which depicted the president — in terms that the White House press office itself has purveyed — as a judicious, resolute leader, blessed with the “vision thing” his father was accused of lacking and firmly in control of the ship of state.

As this new book’s title indicates, Mr. Woodward now sees Mr. Bush as a president who lives in a state of willful denial about the worsening situation in Iraq, a president who insists he won’t withdraw troops, even “if Laura and Barney are the only ones who support me.” (Barney is Mr. Bush’s Scottish terrier.)

As depicted by Mr. Woodward, this is an administration in which virtually no one will speak truth to power, an administration in which the traditional policy-making process involving methodical analysis and debate is routinely subverted. He notes that experts — who recommended higher troop levels in Iraq, warned about the consequences of disbanding the Iraqi Army or worried about the lack of postwar planning— were continually ignored by the White House and Pentagon leadership, or themselves failed, out of cowardice or blind loyalty, to press insistently their case for an altered course in the war.

Mr. Woodward describes the administration’s management of the war as being improvisatory and ad hoc, like a pickup basketball game, and argues that it continually tried to give the public a rosy picture of the war in Iraq (while accusing the press of accentuating the negative), even as its own intelligence was pointing to a rising number of attacks against American forces and an upward spiral of violence.

Mr. Woodward reports that when he told Mr. Rumsfeld that the number of insurgent attacks was going up, the defense secretary replied that they’re now “categorizing more things as attacks.” Mr. Woodward quotes Mr. Rumsfeld as saying, “A random round can be an attack and all the way up to killing 50 people someplace. So you’ve got a whole fruit bowl of different things — a banana and an apple and an orange.”

Mr. Woodward adds: “I was speechless. Even with the loosest and most careless use of language and analogy, I did not understand how the secretary of defense would compare insurgent attacks to a ‘fruit bowl,’ a metaphor that stripped them of all urgency and emotion. The official categories in the classified reports that Rumsfeld regularly received were the lethal I.E.D.’s, standoff attacks with mortars and close engagements such as ambushes.”

Earlier in the volume, in a section describing the former Iraq administrator Jay Garner's reluctance to tell the president about the mistakes he saw the Pentagon making in Iraq, Mr. Woodward writes: “It was only one example of a visitor to the Oval Office not telling the president the whole story or the truth. Likewise, in these moments where Bush had someone from the field there in the chair beside him, he did not press, did not try to open the door himself and ask what the visitor had seen and thought. The whole atmosphere too often resembled a royal court, with Cheney and Rice in attendance, some upbeat stories, exaggerated good news and a good time had by all.”

Were the war in Iraq not a real war that has resulted in more than 2,700 American military casualties and more than 56,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, the picture of the Bush administration that emerges from this book might resemble a farce. It’s like something out of “The Daily Show” or a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, with Freudian Bush family dramas and high-school-like rivalries between cabinet members who refuse to look at one another at meetings being played out on the world stage.

There’s the president, who once said, “I don’t have the foggiest idea about what I think about international, foreign policy,” deciding that he’s going to remake the Middle East and alter the course of American foreign policy.

There’s the president’s national security adviser whining to him that the defense secretary won’t return her phone calls. And there’s the president and Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, trading fart jokes.

“Has he thought this through? What the president says in effect is, We’ve got to press on in honor of the memory of those who have fallen. Another way to say that is we’ve got to have more men fall to honor the memories of those who have already fallen.”